Seventy Minutes From GL11

Back in February Todmorden's Gold Lion pub celebrated its 11th birthday with a weekend of entertainment with Hot Chip's Joe Goddard on the Friday night and on Saturday Deeply Armed playing live upstairs and David Holmes downstairs. The afternoon also had us playing, The Flightpath Estate, from 2pm through until the evening. We had plans to recreate our entire set but for various reasons that hasn't happened but I'd pulled my parts of the set together and it occurred to me that rather than them sitting unused I may as well sequence them together as one piece and share them here. So this is a twelve song selection of what I played at The Golden Lion- Dan, Martin, Baz and Mark's tunes are all missing I'm afraid- keeping track of  what I played is hard enough- and maybe one day we'll sort the full setlist out and post it.

Adam's Flightpath Estate Set From GL11

• Arrival Ft. Kevin McCormick: Common Place (Thought Leadership Remix)
• Cluster: Zum Wohl
• Captain Beefheart and His Magic  Band: Observatory Crest
• Cowboy Junkies: Sweet Jane (Mojo Filter Junkie Re- Love)
• A Mountain Of One: Innocent Reprise
• Thurston Moore: Asperitas
• Warpaint: Disco// Very (Richard Norris Remix)
• X- Press 2: Witchi Tai To (Two Lone Swordsmen remix)
• Doves: Kingdom Of Rust (Prins Thomas Remix)
• Pandit Pam Pam: Tarantula
• Secret Soul Society: See You Dance Again
• Mark Lanegan: Ode To Sad Disco

Arrival's 12" single came out at the start of January, the year's first essential release for me, two tracks from the Stockport duo with the wonderful guitar playing of Kevin McCormick at their core. Thought Leadership, also a guitarist and also from Stockport, remixed Common Place pulling many different threads into one piece of music. 

Cluster's Zum Wohl is from their 1976 album Sowiesoso, a favourite of mine, an album where Cluster and Conny Plank regrouped in rural West Germany and made pastoral ambient electronic/ synth cosmische. 

Captain Beefheart's Observatory Crest made a late jump into my digital record box for the Lion's 11th birthday. I fond myself humming it in the week leading up to the event and it fell into the afternoon vibe I was aiming for. It came out in 1974 on his Bluejeans And Moonbeams album, an uncharacteristically accessible and mainstream sounding record for the good Captain. 

Cowboy Junkies' cover of Sweet Jane came out in 1988 on their majestic Trinity Sessions album. It gained Lou Reed's approval, the song done the way it should have been back when The Velvet Underground made Loaded. Cowboy Junkies have spent the last two week's touring the UK and they played Manchester last Sunday. I was really tempted to go but also tickets were £53 plus fees and it felt like a lot of money. Mojo Filter's Balearic edit is from 2015 and he doesn't do too much to it, just add a subtle electronic undercarriage and a bit of a sunset sheen. 

Innocent Reprise is from A Mountain Of One's EP2, originally out in 2007 and then compiled with EP1 as Collected Works. Lovely sunbaked Balearic folk. 

Asperitas is from an album Thurston Moore put out in early February this year, six long guitar instrumentals inspired by skyscapes of the British Isles, an album called Guitar Explorations Of Cloud Formations. Asperitas is several guitar parts, some controlled feedback and a primitive drum machine. It's a really good album ranging from chilled and krauty to noisy and if by any remote chance he's reading this, vinyl please Thurston. 

We played in rotation at GL11, three tracks each and then handing over to the next Flightpather. Richard Norris' remix of Warpaint came later on in the afternoon, the pub filling up a bit and I can't remember who went before me or what they played but it must have inspired me to turn the bpms up a little and go into dancier territory. Back in 2014 Warpaint were very much a going concern, their California post- punk/ dub sounds getting lots of attention. Richard's remix is one of his best- an indie rock gone Balearic monster.

Two Lone Swordsmen's remix of X- Press 2 is from 2006, Andrew Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood heading into the garage rock/ rockabilly sounds that would come to fruition on 2007's Wrong Meeting. Witchi Tai To is a Native American chant that Jim Pepper turned into a hit single in 1971. Recorded in 1969, peyote jazz fusion. 

Doves Kingdom Of Rust was from the 2006 album of the same name. The Prins Thomas remix of the song is a beauty, the guitars and bass circling round each other, Jimi's windswept vocal nailing a certain type of Mancunian melancholy with references to black birds and cooling towers and then the strings swoop in...

Pandit Pam Pam is from Sao Paulo. His cover of Colourbox's Tarantula came out in February this year. The wandering trumpet line and bubbling bass dance around each other.

Secret Soul Society's edit of Neil Young's 1992 song Harvest Moon dropped into my inbox a few weeks before GL11, the line 'I wanna see you dance again' going round and round, a dub/ disco version of 90s Neil Young.

Mark Lanegan's Ode To Sad Disco always works. New Order- esque dance/ rock from 2012's Blues Funeral, a throbbing sequencer bassline, synths and guitars and packed with very visual lyrical imagery- one of those songs that always hits the spot for me. 

Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's card read this- Imagine the piece as a series of disconnected events- and I plundered my music folders for random songs about events by unconnected artists- Simon and Garfunkel, Gram Parsons, Captain Beefheart, Broken Chanter and Echo Ladies. My friend Chris suggested Ultra Vivid Scene's Not In Love (Hit By A Truck), a list of disconnected and unexperienced events narrated by singer Kurt Ralske over a pleasingly shambolic lo fi Velvets guitar noise. 

Today's card was much more straightforward and could only be read one way. It said this...

Cluster Analysis

Cluster's Sowiesoso came out in 1976, the group reduced to just Roedelius and Moebius and the duo's relocation to Forst in rural West Germany. Sowiesoso has none of the driving motorik of Neu! or the energy of Can or the beatnik lunacy of Faust. It is almost ambient, pastoral music made in response to their surroundings, mixed by the legendary Conny Plank. Slow paced and gentle with odd quirks, it is a post- Eno album- as in it is influenced by his pioneering 70s ambient albums and post their own work with him on previous Cluster albums. It reflects some kind of peace and tranquility gained from rural living- green fields, trees and forests, birdsong, nature's calm...

Zum Wohl

Electric piano chords, birdsong, rising chords, the sun slowly rising over Forst, Baden- Württemberg. 

Feel free to drop your own responses to Cluster Analysis in the comments box. 

V.A. Saturday

I'm a big fan of a well selected and well sequenced Various Artists compilation. Some of my favourite albums from then 1988- 1993 period are V.A. records, Creation's Doing It For The Kids and Keeping The Faith, the Emotions Electric: Retro Techno compilation of Detroit techno, the fist volume of the Cafe del Mar series. Jon Savage has compiled numerous compilation albums, punk, post- punk and his Perfect Motion: A Secret History Of Second Wave Psychedelia. Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs have assembled umpteen good ones. I thought I'd start a Saturday series of Various Artist compilations and see where it goes. There's a backlog of compilations from last year I haven't got near writing about yet and this might be a good way to make it happen.

This one has been sitting on my hard drive since the middle of last year, a twenty track compilation called Silberland Vol 2- The Driving Side Of Kosmische Musik 1974- 1984. I've no idea where it came from or who sent it to me but I burned it to disc and have been playing it in the car this week. It's on Bureau B, a Hamburg based label which releases 'past and future classics'. There are enough familiar names on this- Cluster, Thomas Dinger, Mobius Plank Neimeier, Faust and Roedelius all feature- and some lesser known ones too- Asmus Tietschens, Lapre, Adelbert von Deyen and Serge Blenner are all new to me. The compilers have done a very good job of unearthing twenty relatively unknown kosmische tracks, all in one way or another,built around the motorik drumming West German music is famous for, with some genuine surprises- the synths, keys and electronic sounds here in some cases sound like proto- techno. All twenty tracks are worth hearing, many are groundbreaking, progressive and experimental and most are very accessible too. As my car has eaten up the miles between home and work this week, the non stop rhythms and melodies of these pioneers and innovators from the Federal Republic Of Germany have made it less of a chore. Here are two, one from near the beginning of the album and one from near the end. 

Cluster were Hans- Joachim Roedelius and  Dieter Mobius, a duo who met in 1971 who relocated from Berlin to the rural village of Forst in Lower Saxony. Their album 1976 Sowiesoso is one of my favourites from the scene/ period. The track on Silberland is Prothese, taken from Cluster's Grosses Wasser album, released in 1979, chirruping synth riffs, clanging distorted piano chords and rackety drums, with occasional guitar notes and speaking voices. 

Prothese

Die Partei's Guten Morgen In Koln, from 1981, is early electronica, stuttering drum machine and synths and a lovely arm synth bassline, sounding remarkably like the kind of bassline that would end up emanating from Detroit a few years later. This is as much early 80s synth pop as kosmische but it fits in perfectly with the sweep of West German musik presented on Silberland Vol 2. Which begs the question, why don't I have volume 1?

Guten Morgen In Koln

Monday's Long Song

Back to work today after two weeks off so something calming is needed to ease my way back into the maelstrom. This is some gentle, analogue ambient/ cosmische music from Cluster in 1976, the duo formed by Roedelius and Moebius, with Conny Plank in the producer's chair and after some time with Brian Eno the previous year when they all recorded together with Michael Rother as Harmonia. Eno's influence can be heard all over the eight minutes of this track as can their decision to leave Berlin and head for the West German countryside, where they built a studio in a village in Forst, Lower Saxony. 

Sowiesoso, the album from which this song is the opener as well as the title track, is a kind of pastoral krautrock, ambient sounds, washes and soft pulses, a step away from the motorik drumbeat into a calmer world. Sowiesoso translates as 'anyway' and that's kind of how this sounds. 

Sowiesoso

Very Cosmic

How about some krautrock? Oh don't groan you lot.

In 1974 Michael Rother (from Neu!) joined with Moebius and Roedelius (both from Cluster) to make the Musik Von Harmonia album. This track (song isn't really the right word) is Dino, lovely swathes of sound and melody with rhythm driving it on. The album also contains tracks called Sehr Kosmisch and Hausmusik- both of it's time and ahead of time. I've got a feeling the last time I played this in full the even numbered tracks were good and odd numbered tracks less interesting, but I could be imagining it.

There's something about all this snow and ice which seems quite teutonic. If you're interested BBC 4's excellent krautrock documentary is repeated tonight at 10.30. Worth staying up for.

04 Dino.wma